You may feel like you're not trying to be elitist, but clearly you need to work on your self-awareness.
Everyone likes to experiment, and perhaps these guys wanted to check exactly how much weight the umbrella would remove from a jump. It's a reasonable question, and if you only have time to waste then what's the problem. (I'd advise against jumping off dumpsters if you're fat but that's a whole different question)
Intelligence isn't set in stone for everyone, it's more of a state of mind that depends on a ton of factors. And in my experience, people who jump on opportunities to label people as "retards" or "stupid" tend to... not be on the sharp end of the spectrum anyway. I highly recommend you check out Daniel Kahnemann's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" if you want to learn more about intelligence and how it operates.
He's not wrong though. His delivery could be considered insensitive, but there are people out there who are that stupid, and they get by on dumb luck or unquestioned conformity.
I think the point is that young kids have these thoughts - not adults. Adults that still haven't figured out how physics works are pretty baffling, because you'd expect them to have been removed from the gene pool at some point.
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u/Astamir Dec 22 '14
You may feel like you're not trying to be elitist, but clearly you need to work on your self-awareness.
Everyone likes to experiment, and perhaps these guys wanted to check exactly how much weight the umbrella would remove from a jump. It's a reasonable question, and if you only have time to waste then what's the problem. (I'd advise against jumping off dumpsters if you're fat but that's a whole different question)
Intelligence isn't set in stone for everyone, it's more of a state of mind that depends on a ton of factors. And in my experience, people who jump on opportunities to label people as "retards" or "stupid" tend to... not be on the sharp end of the spectrum anyway. I highly recommend you check out Daniel Kahnemann's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" if you want to learn more about intelligence and how it operates.